Mountain Dog - today's poem

Mountain Dog

A dull boy on a walkabout sees stranger fauna

than back down home - menacing dark souls

and big wild dogs that lurk in biblical fog

and powerful ladies menacing and solid

 

The lax boy meets the bright girl in the fog

as a mountain dog on a crag barks resolutely

When the boy kisses the bright lass in the mist

she decks him with her quick hard right fist

 

The punching teen leaves him alone to perish

but steadily he wakes as the dog licks his face

whimpers and paws in the moonless darkness

He shambles down the path at the dog’s lead

 

He thinks Tennessee is just a microdot away

drawls slowly in down-mountain canine mentality

The holy boy, his mind doubled by events

like a horse is wary of his legs on slippery tile

 

Long exertion deposits him upon a boulder

with dog at his feet waiting for his recovery

till slowly sun dawns on broken jaw pain

and his spirit guide leads him to deliverance

Hobo - today's poem

Hobo

Think on life’s philosopher

out in the dark, alone in the cold

their home a veil of stars

the wailing night a suit on their back

 

Material comforts

exist free of sublime thought

when humanity is unleavened

by suffering and sharing

 

Nothing is perfect, each thing has its flaw

no clear path to purity or saintliness

exists in diamonds or men

pursued or persecuted arbitrarily

 

High on the mountain the voice in the wind

speaks without mouth, toils without effort

the relationship of things to nothings

is constantly established

 

Who controls our destinies but us?

I think of the hobo alone in the night

golf courses and luxury may lie nearby

but beatitude lies nearer in the heart

Drive - today's poem

 

Drive

Big black shiny cars, longer and sleeker

than my big black shiny 50 chevy coupe

with its silver push-button starter

a discovery machine whose bright headlights

penetrate the gloom beyond its leopard-print seat covers

as other cars tear screaming, howling down the road  

like angry mindless wolverines

throwing gravel and free of ministers, professors

accountants and specters looming over the pavement of life

Cars pour into night like time flowing down dark tunnels

In big black shining cars all the long needless night

young men not needing to know where they are going

today's poem - the apple tree

 

the apple tree

old John from down the street built all the county bridges

his family has lived here since before the revolution when we were pawns of England

and he says these apples are good to eat

they may be small and colored funny but I have always liked them

I used to pick them walking home after school

he takes one from its regularly irregular apple twig and tastes it

and I follow suit

glisando - today's poem (and my very slight homage to Peter Frampton)

glissando

 

again Pete plays an inescapable tune

and I begin to see time as an ocean

great green and surging with foam

 

now I know that a world conquered

inevitably lost again washes away

what Django hath wrought

Everything Must Be Paranoia and Destruction - today's poem

Everything Must Be Paranoia and Destruction

 

Someway I avoid reincarceration

place one shoe aloft then another

keep down my head avert my eyes

traverse shadows and streetlights

dodge officials on sidewalks

as their mountain aeries go volcanic

 

I’m not paranoid.  They’re out to get me!

They see me as cattle; a cash cow, in fact

expendable – my death none of their concern

Vistas before me are clear and bright

until it cuts into their heathenish profit

then their pretty blimp goes down in flames

 

Political prison dreams started at age 19

I languished in jail cells slowly flooding

as laughing hyenas poked me with clubs

in the brilliant sunlight of mid-day

of my endless sentence in a cold stone jail

while their ocean liner shipwrecked and sank

 

Where do I get the idea that I am at liberty

peeping through my cell bars into the gloom

The jailhouse rocks as though in an earth quake

as hyperborean sun glows here at midnight

and clouds roll ominous stormy and black

until all their high rises crumble and crash

 

As foot-thick walls come falling in on me

I feel like a true cyborg Butch Cavendish

but bad guys who thought I was a friend

trust me to back them in every fight

while I stage a break from Minooka State

while bosses’ silver rockets burst aflame

Meanwhile - today's poem

Meanwhile

 

in the Garden of Eden coloring book

with pencils and pastels I listen intently

to Gris-Gris Dr John’s first album

before a woozy late night poetry zoom

 

van Gogh is perched on my shoulder

while I reconsider life’s expanses

and inspect a lifetime of inner travel

silliness, drama, circumspection, noise

 

Staring eyes of pale sanitarium blue

calm and placid like a mild summer day

Vincent mumbles as elsewhere tides roll in  

whispers Don’t take any wooden nickels

 

Blackened beneath buckled maroon skies

small boats and battered dinghies struggle

as gray-blue hulls chop into a fog green sea

in a rainless yet stormy and violent scene

 

Remember the horseback leather clad police

in Planet of the Apes and toss a tie-dye frisbee

wondering could they hit it with their rifles

in the verdant forest encircling the garden

 

What now, Vincent?